Advice from a sophomore: first-year class recommendations at Barnard
Not only did these classes introduce me to Barnard’s teaching style, but they also helped me understand what I wanted to study.
Photography by Claire Cenovic/The Barnard Bulletin
November 19, 2024
I am someone who gets stressed every semester when course selection time comes around, but this was particularly the case for my freshman fall. If you find yourself in a similar position, whether or not you are a freshman, here are some courses I took my first year that I loved and would recommend to anyone!
Offered: Fall/Spring
Credits: 3
Foundations requirement: First-year seminar
Made up of a first-year writing and a first-year seminar course, the First-Year Experience curriculum is unique to Barnard and designed to teach students how to closely read a text, discuss it, and convey their ideas in writing. For seminar, I took Feminism and the Politics of Anger with Professor Meredith Benjamin, and this has remained one of the best courses I have taken to date.
The readings she assigns from authors including Audre Lorde, Sara Ahmed, and June Jordan, as well as the discussions she facilitates, are truly enriching and will leave you with a valuable perspective to take into the rest of your college career. We took the course material and applied it through discussion posts, two essays, and a final zine project. Professor Benjamin is incredible, and while the exact courses she teaches may vary from semester to semester, the content and her teaching style make her classes amazing.
Offered: Fall
Credits: 3
Foundations requirement: Arts & humanities; Social difference; Social science
One of the first classes I took my Freshman fall was Introduction to Environmental Humanities with Professor Janet Jakobsen. It provides a great introduction to famous authors and thinkers, such as Marx, Amitav Ghosh, and Kandice Chuh, and teaches you how to manage a reading-heavy and essay-based course. The course focuses on skills such as reading, actively engaging with a text, and applying that to your writing.
Additionally, this course introduces you to how the environment intersects with race, class, ethnicity, etc. While the class is not explicitly about intersectionality, you will leave with a new perspective that integrates the environment with elements of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies major, taught by one of the most remarkable professors in the department.
Offered: Fall/Spring
Credits: 3
Foundations requirement: Arts & humanities; Social difference
I loved Professor Jakobsen and Environmental Humanities so much that I took another one of her courses in my freshman spring. In Critical Approaches, we read texts on social and cultural theory and learned to apply our analysis to our writing, as well as articulate how the concepts could be seen in our own lives. The format is very similar to Environmental Humanities, and the emphasis on interdisciplinary studies makes it such a special class that, as its name suggests, it truly expands your critical thinking abilities. The concepts of racial capitalism, the politics of life and health, and harm reduction were particularly interesting, as were the course readings by Ned Blackhawk, Harsha Walia, Arturo Escobar, and Shira Hassan.
Professor Jakobsen is the only professor on this list to be featured twice, and there is a strong reason for it. “She has such a wealth of wisdom about the world and how our society is organized,” said Jillian Sullivan (BC ‘26). “This class specifically gave me the chance to do a whole other kind of thinking and learning that I don’t do in my biology or chemistry classes. It was really special,” shared Sullivan, a STEM major. While Professor Jakobsen is on sabbatical this year, both courses I mentioned are still being taught by wonderful professors, and I would encourage you to take them if you have the opportunity.
Offered: Fall/Spring
Credits: 3
Foundations requirement: 3 credit science lecture/lab requirement
I also took Introduction to Psychology with Professor E'mett McCaskill during my first semester and loved it. This is a course that is extremely helpful to take if you don’t know exactly what you want to study yet because it provides a comprehensive introduction to the psychology major. The first section of the course covers history, research approaches, and neuroscience. The second covers the brain, consciousness, and learning. Then, the third and final section is an overview of development, personality, social psychology, and psychopathology.
Professor McCaskill provides many real-world examples which allow you to synthesize the material. Even though it is a big lecture class with 200+ students, she takes the time to answer questions and make sure everyone leaves with a sense of clarity. This class has three exams, which will help you develop your studying skills in a college setting. She’s engaging, and overall, it’s a wonderful course that I would highly recommend.
This is a very popular course among first years for several reasons. “It was very digestible, yet informative beyond the high-school level AP Psych I had taken, and it developed on information I knew and also taught me more,” said Samantha Elkins (BC ‘27). “As a freshman, taking it in my freshman fall, I wondered what college was going to be, and that class was definitely a nice way to ease into it.”
Offered: Fall/Spring
Credits: 3
Foundations requirement: Arts and humanities; Thinking locally - New York City; Thinking technologically and digitally
Another course I took during my freshman fall was Design Futures: New York City with Abigail Chang. This course is designed to cater to first-year students and provide an introduction to both New York City through a design lens and to the architecture major at Barnard. The class is centered around projects that teach you about different design elements, including space, shape, and positionality. For one of them, I designed a window out of wire and took a photo of it in Central Park. The idea was that you were looking out and seeing this view from your window, but the window itself was made of metal, which was a commentary on the urban concrete jungle idea of New York City.
The class also incorporates several fun field trips throughout the semester. We visited The Museum of Natural History, The Whitney Museum, and an architecture firm in Dumbo, all of which were incredible experiences that allowed us to get to know the city better. The class was so unique and fun, and you were able to learn so much about what goes into design from a foundational level.
“Not only were we learning about cool things in the classroom, but getting to see them first hand in New York is something that was inspiring, and that I feel motivated us to keep going and do well,” said Milo Sandgren (BC ‘27). Sandgren also described Abby’s energy as “fabulous” and explained that “Working with a teacher that had so much knowledge about the field and so many connections within the field really allowed us to assess whether or not we wanted to continue on an architecture and design path, especially as freshmen.”
Offered: Fall/Spring
Credits: 4 [lecture & lab]
Foundations requirement: Thinking Quantitatively and Empirically & Thinking Technologically and Digitally
Finally, the last class I will mention is Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science, which I took with Professor Emily Black. Whether you have any coding experience or not, this is an excellent introduction to Python coding, providing a foundation for a potential major path and other basic programming skills. You code and learn about the applications of data science, both good and bad.
Professor Black was a great professor whose openness to answering questions and supportiveness were very helpful. There was weekly homework for both the course and the lab, as well as a few projects, all of which were fun and helped you practice the coding skills you were developing. Gaining knowledge of the technology we use regularly is rewarding and has undoubtedly introduced me to a new interest.
In closing, not only do all these courses fulfill general education requirements, but they are also designed to introduce you to valuable ideas with real-world applications. When choosing my courses, I felt overwhelmed and pressured to choose what I thought were the “right courses.” If you find yourself feeling this way, understand that whatever you end up taking is the right choice. One positive aspect of Barnard’s liberal arts curriculum is the variety and flexibility of the course requirements. With that being said, I think these courses will enable you to have an incredible first-year experience, and I could not suggest them enough. They remain standout courses for me that I feel lucky to have been able to take.